Researchers have found that all those state laws designed to combat "voter fraud" are really effective at suppressing minority turnout.

Even as the White House combusts in a spiritual fireball of overt lies, incoherent screeds, and novelty miniature Russian flags, the people who make up President Trump's newly-minted cabinet are busily planning the long-awaited implementation of their respective agendas. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a man whose checkered history of voter suppression is so damning that Mitch McConnell cravenly prevented Elizabeth Warren from even mentioning it on the Senate floor, will soon help quarterback the President's promised investigation into "voter fraud," a phrase I put in scare quotes because, again, no such problem exists.

One reason that plowing ahead with this farce is so dangerous—you know, besides the fact that the White House wants to spend taxpayer dollars to painstakingly deconstruct a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory—is that the primary policy weapon deployed against "voter fraud" are voter identification laws. These laws, which have been enacted by 33 state legislatures, are often criticized on the grounds that they disproportionately affect members of minority groups, whose comparatively reduced access to the requisite IDs prevents them from exercising their constitutional right to vote. A new study designed to test this theory yielded some pretty grim results, as detailed by the researchers in the Washington Post:

When we compare overall turnout in states with strict ID laws to
turnout in states without these laws, we find no significant
difference. That pattern matches with most existing studies. But when
we dig deeper and look specifically at racial and ethnic minority
turnout, we see a significant drop in minority participation when
and where these laws are implemented.

Hispanics are affected the most: Turnout is 7.1 percentage points
lower in general elections and 5.3 points lower in primaries in strict
ID states than it is in other states. Strict ID laws mean lower
African American, Asian American and multiracial American turnout as
well. White turnout is largely unaffected.

The report goes on to note that the turnout gap between white voters and minority voters increases significantly in states with strict voter ID laws, too.

In the graph below, we display the turnout gap between whites and
Latinos, Asian Americans and African Americans in states with and
without strict voter ID laws. In general elections in non-strict
states, for instance, the gap between white and Latino turnout is on
average 4.9 points.

But in states with strict ID laws, that gap grows to a substantial
13.2 points. The gap between white turnout and Asian American and African American turnout also increases.

As you might expect, these patterns affect the partisan and ideological compositions of the electorate.

All else equal, when strict ID laws are instituted, the turnout gap
between Republicans and Democrats in primary contests more than
doubles from 4.3 points to 9.8 points. Likewise, the turnout gap
between conservative and liberal voters more than doubles from 7.7 to
20.4 points.

By instituting strict voter ID laws, states can alter the electorate
and shift outcomes toward those on the right. Where these laws are
enacted, the influence of Democrats and liberals wanes and the power
of Republicans grows. Unsurprisingly, these strict ID laws are passed
almost exclusively by Republican legislatures.

The president spends a lot of time claiming that elections are rigged, and it turns out that he's right—just not in the way he thinks. If there were any evidence of the brand of large-scale voter fraud that the Trump administration has so solemnly promised to "investigate," voter ID laws might be one of many potential solutions to the problem. But given that no such evidence exists, these schemes should be seen for what they are: insidious, undemocratic, unconstitutional efforts by Republican-controlled legislatures to obtain political power not by actually winning the free marketplace of ideas, but by artificially restricting who can enter the marketplace instead.